


King of Hearts

by Amberdreams



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War I, M/M, Mental Instability, Mental Institutions, Romance, unrealism!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-28
Updated: 2014-05-28
Packaged: 2018-01-26 22:51:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1705502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amberdreams/pseuds/Amberdreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Private Padalecki is happy (or as happy as a man can be in the middle of the war to end all wars) looking after his carrier pigeons. When his commander sends him on a dangerous mission to defuse a German arms dump in an abandonned French town, the last thing he is expecting to find is love with just a soupçon of craziness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	King of Hearts

****For[](http://spn-cinema.livejournal.com/profile)[SPN_CINEMA](http://spn-cinema.livejournal.com/)  
 **Movie prompt:** King of Hearts  
 **Warnings** : Mental illnesses portrayed in an unrealistic manner and talked about in Victorian terms. War-like levels of violence, also portrayed in an unrealistic manner. Though the fic has French, German and English characters, inexplicably, everyone speaks English. Jared has unhistorical long hair without lice because – ew! Way to kill any romance…  
 **Acknowledgements** : A huge thank you to my two awesome betas [](http://matchboximpala.livejournal.com/profile)[**matchboximpala**](http://matchboximpala.livejournal.com/) and[](http://keep-waking-up.livejournal.com/profile) **keep_waking_up**. They have saved you from my run-on sentences and many other bad habits. Any remaining idiocies are all down to me.  
 **Disclaimer** : The Argyle and Butte Scottish Rifles is totally fictional and bears no resemblance to any British regiment, past or present. Neither do any of the characters portrayed resemble any real person, alive or dead – even though I’ve appropriated the names and physical attributes of certain CW actors, they are playing parts here, just as they do on screen. None of it is real, folks…

 

[ ](http://imgur.com/Mnip8TY)

  
**King of Hearts**

~0~0~

Belleville was aptly named, because she was both beautiful and a town. She liked that about her name, as she was a straightforward sort of place. Founded in the ninth century by Finbar, an itinerant Irish saint, Belleville had nurtured and protected her townsfolk as best she could for centuries. She had seen many of her men ride off to war, she had been besieged three times, been sacked twice, and had her heart singed once by accident, when Madame Pereaux forgot about the bread and set their house on fire, the resulting conflagration burning down Belleville’s fine Romanesque church of St Finbar and her council’s chambers. Of course, her citizens rebuilt her church in the new gothic style, even bigger and better than before, and the replacement Town Hall gained a tall tower topped with a wonderful mechanical clock that had a life-size knight in armour that emerged once every twenty-four hours from his portal to strike a bell with his mace.

So when the Germans invaded France in 1914, Belleville, with her stout, stone walls and sturdy citizens, thought she was as prepared as she could be for any kind of conflict.

She was wrong.

It was Belleville’s misfortune to be situated right in the middle of one of the lesser-known but strategically important Salients called Les Cinglés. Four years into the fighting and Belleville was a battered beauty now, her walls and buildings full of holes. She had been on the Front, behind the Front and was currently occupied by German troops. Troops who were now busy packing up and leaving, as the Allied forces’ latest big push had actually been successful in moving the Front northwards by a couple of miles, and Belleville was once again going to swap sides. This time she wasn’t sure she would survive.

One army or another - Belleville had quite lost track of which - had built a large concrete blockhouse in Belleville’s town square, and crammed it full of munitions. Now the Germans had been given orders that set her foundations trembling.

“Are the fuses set?”

“Yes, Oberst Scholz!” Hauptmann Bobo Bieber clicked his shiny black-booted heels together as he saluted. “Heinrich has wired the trigger to the town clock so the whole lot will blow at midnight when the knight strikes that stupid bell.”

“Excellent, excellent,” Oberst Scholz rubbed his hands together. “With a bit of luck the enemy troops will be in the town by then, and will be blown sky high along with this miserable heap of stone.”

From his darkened window overlooking the square, Henri Bresson, town barber and resistance leader, had been listening in to the Boches’ conversation and now recoiled in horror. _Mon Dieu_! Less than twenty-four hours and the whole town was going to be an inferno. He woke his wife and left her with instructions to warn as many townsfolk as she could, pack a bag and leave quickly.

“But what about you, Henri?” Madame Bresson’s voice trailed after Henri as he ran downstairs to the radio hidden behind the washbasins in his barber’s shop.

“Never fear, ma cherie, I’ll follow once I’ve warned the Allies.”

Unfortunately for both the Allies and Monsieur Bresson, the German patrol was not stupid enough to think it was normal for a respectable matron like Madame Bresson to be running around the town at one in the morning, clutching a large valise. They decided to investigate.

As a result, it was a somewhat garbled, trunkated message that reached the Argyle and Butte Scottish Rifles regiment encamped in the trenches a mile to the south of Belleville. A message that was cut off when Henri was dragged from his shop floor into the street with a gun to his head. Henri bled out onto Belleville’s cobbles while Madame Bresson wailed and the good citizens of the town packed and fled.

 

**0x0x0x0**

Private Jared Padalecki (ornithological specialist) loved his pigeons. Ruby and Meg were beautiful birds, his girls, and he talked to them incessantly when he thought no one was listening, but sometimes he’d forget and do it when people were around. As a result his comrades treated Jared like the regimental equivalent of an amiable village idiot.

“Fetch me Padalecki!” Brigadier Henry Algernon Storm yelled at Captain Hamilton after he’d read the transcript of the Belleville barber spy’s message. Hamilton wasn’t worried by this apparent choler. The Brigadier wasn’t angry, yelling had been his default tone of voice since a shell had exploded too close last winter and burst his eardrum. Killed his damned horse, too, dash it.

“I don’t know what they want with Pigeon Paddy,” Private Hamish McGregor whispered to the rat peeking out from his inside pocket. His booted feet clumped loudly on the wooden boardwalk as he walked down the trench to fetch Private Padalecki. “That boy’s a few farthings short of a shilling, if you ask me.” The rat’s whiskers quivered in agreement.

Jared Padalecki had been fifteen when England declared war on Germany. His big brother Jeffrey had taken the King’s shilling on a summer’s day almost as hot as this one, and joined up to train as an ordinance specialist. Three years later, Jeff was dead in the mud of Flanders, Mrs Padalecki had wasted away with grief, and Jared had taken Jeff’s place in the Argyle and Butte Scottish Rifles. One Padalecki for another. The British Army thought it was a fair exchange.

Jared had grown tall as a tree (perhaps that was one reason the birds liked him so much) but was no more warlike at eighteen than he’d been as a child making bridges out of blades of grass to help ants to cross puddles. But the War didn’t care about how bloodthirsty its soldiers were; the gentle exploded, were scythed by machine gun fire, or choked on the yellow gas just as prettily as the fierce. Jared had been at the Front for a mere four months and had already seen enough death to fill his dreams with blood forever.

He was puzzled by Captain Hamilton’s summons; there hadn’t been much call (thankfully) for his pigeons lately, as HQ was relying more and more on the radios. His mystification only deepened when he was escorted into the presence of the Brigadier, whose brash ginger moustache and sideburns always intimidated Jared. It was the way they continually clashed with the Brigadier’s ruddy complexion, as if they had a life of their own.

“Ah, Padalecki! Good of you to volunteer, boy.”

Volunteer? Jared opened his mouth to ask what the Brigadier meant but as usual he was too tongue-tied when faced with all that bristling ginger.

“We need an ordinance expert to defuse a blockhouse full of explosives in Belleville, and I hear you are just the man for the job. Now take what supplies you need and get going, come along, there’s no time to lose, chop chop!”

Captain Hamilton ushered Jared away before his stammered protests about being _an ornithological expert not an ordinance expert_ , and _you’ve got the wrong Padalecki_ could annoy the Brigadier.

“Let’s face it, Private, we need every competent soldier we’ve got for the next big push in a few days’ time. Do you want us to send one of your comrades to face what is probably certain death in that poxy town, when they could be killing Fritz on the Front Line, while you sit around sending messages, worrying about your birds dying? No? I thought not…”

Jared had no argument with that. He knew what horrors his regiment faced every time they had to go over the top, and just how lucky he was that the Colonel needed Jared’s birds ready to go during an offensive. Tending his birds kept Jared out of the worst of the fighting, and he was grateful for that.  
So he kept his misgivings to himself, and kitted up with rifle and ammunition, his sgian dubh down his sock, and a pair of wire cutters he didn’t know what to do with. He tucked Ruby and Meg’s cage under his arm and took a deep breath. He stared up at the clear arc of midnight blue sky and silently hoped Jeff would be there in spirit to help him through this, before setting off at a jog along the rutted road to Belleville, kilt flapping in the night breeze.

 

**0x0x0x0**

Jensen had been sixteen and bearer of another, more prestigious name when the circus came to Belleville, and he fell in love twice over. Firstly with the travelling life and secondly with Emile. Emile was the Circus d’Etoile’s equivalent of the late great Jules   
Léotard  
, with the added advantage of being very much alive and  prettier than Ganymede. Emile was not only beautiful, but also athletic and lithe and could fly through the air with the greatest of ease, so it was hardly surprising that the young, aristocratic but provincial boy was overwhelmed. The circus camped outside Belleville’s walls for a week, in the big square field where the Romans had once dug their ditches and marched to fight the Gauls.  Jensen made a point of visiting every single night.

Even so, it had surprised everyone, even Jensen, that when the circus de-camped at the end of that week Jensen was sitting next to Emile at the head of the caravan. It was his seventeenth birthday and he should have been celebrating in the chateau, but he happily left Belleville and his ancestral home and his aristocratic name behind him, and never looked back. The circus embraced him like his family never had, accepting his nature with a carefree _vive la difference!_ , Emile taught him how to love and how to fly.

After a year, when the circus found its circuitous way back to the area of Les Cinglés and set up camp in the town neighbouring Belleville, Jensen had been away from his family long enough to have forgotten how vindictive his father could be when crossed, and how much power and influence the d’Aubussons held in the region. The Vicomte d’Aubusson sent three men to the final evening’s performance. They enjoyed the show enormously, but that didn’t stop them fulfilling the Vicomte’s orders afterwards, by bundling Jensen into an old flour sack and carrying him away afterwards.

Coughing and spluttering from inhaling the coarse flour dust, Jensen blinked incredulously at his father.

“What have you to say for yourself?” The Vicomte demanded, that fierce gaze raking over Jensen’s inappropriately form-fitting costume and smudged stage make-up, blazing with disgust. The coating of chaff dimmed Jensen’s spangles, but Jensen knew his father’s problem with all this went much deeper than his son wearing too much sparkle.

“You kidnapped me!” Jensen said, still unable to believe his father’s audacity. Then he caught sight of the fine Louis XIV clock that had presided on that ornate marble fireplace since both were made, and he felt the colour drain from his cheeks. It was already four hours since the performance had ended. Emile would be frantic looking for him, while the circus would be packing up, ready to embrace the freedom of the road again. They would leave at dawn – it was inevitable. He knew they wouldn’t wait for him, it wasn’t their way. Circus people came and went as they pleased, they didn’t like to feel tied down, and assumed every member of the troupe felt the same.

Jensen fiercely regretted the stupid argument he’d had with Emile earlier that day… _merde_. Emile might even think Jensen had left deliberately, had grown tired of the travelling life.

“I don’t have time for this. I have to leave, immediately.”

“Back to your sodomite lover? I think not,” his father said, nodding to someone behind Jensen, and before Jensen could turn, a swift blow to the head laid him out cold.

 

**0x0x0x0**

Belleville was deserted; save for a patrol of German soldiers commanded by Hauptman Bieber, left behind to make sure none of the fleeing townsfolk tried anything heroically stupid, like the poor dead barber, whose body had been left lying in the street outside his shop. No one did. Folk gathered up a few valuable possessions and fled without a thought about trying to defuse the German booby trap that was set to blow their ancient town to smithereens.

The townsfolk didn’t even try and tend to Henri Bresson’s body, they were too fearful for their own lives. The baker’s wife put an arm around the weeping Madame Bresson and dragged her away, leaving Henri’s broken body sprawled on the street like a bloody bundle of rags.

Belleville was disappointed to find her people so weak and spineless. She didn’t like this empty feeling within her walls with everyone gone; she had never in her history been abandoned so thoroughly. Even during the worst excesses of the Black Death, her streets had still hummed with the clatter of wheels on cobbles as they piled the dead onto wagons, and though her houses had been filled with weeping, that was still a sign of life within her walls. So it was with hope as well as curiosity she observed the stranger slipping surreptitiously through her gates a few hours before dawn.

Belleville’s interest was piqued.  The young soldier’s jacket and weapons appeared modern and dull, his uniform made of khaki-coloured wool with brass buttons and embellished with tan webbed belt, packs and pouches, all of which she recognised from her last occupation as being British. His lower half however, was at once more interesting and familiar to a town that had seen several centuries of men in tunics – a knee length, dark green, red and blue kilt that showed off the stranger’s long, well-muscled legs in a most satisfactory manner. Inexplicably, under his arm he appeared to be carrying a birdcage containing two pigeons.

Sadly, it seemed likely Belleville would learn little more about this intriguing new arrival, as his route was about to converge at the street corner near St Finbar’s church, where the German patrol was also headed.

_Quelle domage_ …

 

**0x0x0x0**

The town was eerily silent, with the unmistakable feeling of emptiness that came from being deserted rather than merely sleeping. Jared hadn’t been at the Front that long, but it was a quality he had come to recognise within minutes of entering a village or town.

Ruby and Meg were restless in their cage, not used to being jostled around in the middle of the night. Jared was somewhat distracted by their distress, so had forgotten the need to be quiet and cautious as he approached the town square. _Captain Hamilton would have torn him off a strip for being so stupid_ he thought, when he practically bumped into a very surprised German soldier. There was an instant of frozen shock on both their parts, then Fritz opened his mouth wider than Jared thought was possible and screamed “Alarm!”

Jared turned tail and ran, kilt flapping round his legs.

The nailed soles of his boots clattered on the cobbles, too loud in the emptiness, and as he ran Jared peered frantically into the darkness for that darker patch of shadow that might indicate somewhere to hide. Shouts and then a single shot rang out from behind him indicating the Germans were still hot on his trail though it was hard to hear them over his own noisy breathing and clattering footsteps.

He took a sharp left, one shoulder careening off the crumbling plaster coated wall. He only realised when it was too late that it was a dead end. His way was barred, literally, by a pair of huge iron gates set in a stone archway with lettering above it that he had neither time nor light enough to read. He grasped the ironwork in desperation only to feel a surge of hope when the gates parted under the pressure. They were unlocked.

Thanking his lucky stars, Jared shoved his way into a courtyard garden that led up to some steps. Inside the building, which loomed imposingly in the night, he could see a warm yellow light shining. Not stopping to think, Jared dashed up the stairway and through the metal studded outer door that thankfully stood ajar.

The hallway he found himself in wasn’t lit, so he had to chase the yellow glow up another flight of stone stairs. At the top was another iron barred gate, standing open, leading into a large high ceilinged room.  Several people looked up as Jared entered. For a few seconds he wondered why these were the only townsfolk left in Belleville, then realisation dawned. All the people in the room were dressed in similar, ill-fitting grey linen jackets and matching caps, and several were engaged in behaviour that was, on a second glance, somewhat eccentric. These were not townsfolk at all, but lunatics, abandoned by the good citizens of Belleville.

One of the men, who’d been busy building the most magnificently constructed house of cards Jared had ever seen, rose to his feet, beaming in delight.

“Welcome, my friend, welcome!” The man doffed his grey linen cap revealing a mop of dark hair almost as unruly as Jared’s, and bowed with a flourish. “I am Misha, the Duke of Clubs, and this,” he gestured to a solemn, thin-faced older man who didn’t look away from the careful placement of the next card atop the construction on the table, “this is Monsieur Marguerite.”

Jared looked around a little frantically as he heard shouting in German echoing up from the bottom of the stairs.

“Um, right, pleased to meet you. Mind if I join you?”

He didn’t wait for a reply, but quickly moved round the table so the house of cards concealed his kilt. Shoving the birdcage underneath the table, he snatched a discarded, somewhat crumpled jacket from the back of a chair and pulled it on over his khaki uniform. The Duke generously offered his own linen cap to replace Jared’s Glangarry hat to top off his disguise, and not a moment to soon, as the entire troop of Germans burst through the gates.

Only to stop dead at the strange sight that greeted them.

Jared grinned openly as the Duke went through the same welcome ritual for the Germans, introducing himself and Mister Daisy, but Jared’s smile faded when the Duke went on to wave at Jared. Hell’s bells, he should have seen that one coming.

“And this is…?” The Duke trailed off expectantly and Jared found himself momentarily stumped. Then his nervous gaze caught on the playing card in his hand. _Improvisation, Jared_ , he thought. He waved a hand imperiously.

“Of course, I am the King of Hearts.”

Jared wasn’t anticipating the furore his choice of identity would cause. The Duke’s face lit up like Christmas morning, and even M. Marguerite was suddenly animated.

“My lord King, you have returned!” To Jared’s dismay, the Duke knelt down and began enthusiastically kissing his hand, then working his way up Jared’s arm. Several of the other inmates dropped their various activities to similarly fall to their knees, with a loud chorus of joyful cries. Thankfully the Duke was the only person so enamoured with the kissing part. So much for going unnoticed. When Jared glanced across the room at the German patrol, however, he saw that this overexcited display of affection from his ‘subjects’ was actually working in Jared’s favour.

The young German captain was staring at the chaos with a look of horror that was matched by the rank and file behind him, some of whom were already edging nervously backwards. The captain raised his hand and said something that Jared’s rudimentary knowledge of German (his French was much, much better) translated as _shit, they are all crazy, let’s skedaddle_. Jared watched incredulously as the whole troop turned tail and actually ran down the stairs as if their uniforms were on fire.

Grinning, Jared looked down at the Duke, who returned his gaze with a knowing look in his piercing blue eyes, and actually winked. The moment of sanity was brief, over so quickly Jared was left wondering if he’d imagined it. The Duke rose to his feet and announced to the room that celebrations were in order to honour the return of the King. This seemed to entail everybody in the room dashing about aimlessly and ignoring Jared.

Which was all fine and dandy, but Jared didn’t have time for a party. He had to find the barber/spy who could tell him what the cryptic phrase ‘ _the knight strikes at midnight’_ meant, and where the blockhouse full of explosives was so he could attempt to defuse it.  Despite the fact that the deadliest thing Jared had experience in defusing was an argument.

He tried asking the question of one or two of the inmates, but unsurprisingly got nowhere. Even if any of them had known about the town barber, or the German blockhouse, they were much too excited about Jared’s royal comeback to make much sense. And besides, one of them told him, the Barber was not dead or a spy at all, pointing to a hirsute chap that the Duke then introduced as Figaro, the Barber of Seville. There was nothing for it.  Jared would have to venture out into the hopefully empty town to carry on his search, and pray that he wouldn’t bump into the Boche again.  He looked at his birdcage and pondered for a second.

“So, I’ll leave my girls here where it’s safe, if that’s alright,” Jared announced to no one in particular. He placed the cage on top of a cabinet near a barred window, where his birds would see the sun when it rose, and turned to go; only to find his path blocked by a solid body. It stopped him in his tracks and he looked down an inch or so into a pair of huge and startled eyes.

Jared couldn’t help but scan the rest of this creature, who was so close he was virtually standing on Jared’s feet. Feeling strangely breathless, Jared took in the smooth brow, the almost but not quite perfect Grecian nose scattered with freckles, the _definitely_ perfect bow of soft pink lips. As he looked lower, there was a spread of broad shoulders and a narrow tapered waist that the tatty linen uniform couldn’t disguise. The man was a Phidias statue brought to life, a paragon of manly beauty, an Adonis. Jared wondered vaguely who the lucky man had been who had breathed life into marble, and what the touch of those lips had felt like…. Jared’s gaze wandered of its own volition back up to those shockingly intelligent, mostly-green eyes, where it stopped, caught.

The shock of meeting that unblinking stare was unexpected and visceral. Jared was momentarily frozen to the spot. The slate of his brain, that had been covered in frantic chalk instructions about blockhouses and defusings, inadequacies and worries, each of which seemed to be terminated in scribbled explosions - all of it was completely wiped clean by the sweep of that look.

Then Adonis’s blink broke the spell, and Jared was free to move again. He was just sad that he now had no excuse to stay.

“I’ll just…um,” he said, inwardly berating himself for his apparent inability to sound even vaguely intelligent in the face of such perfection. Blushing, Jared fled the asylum almost as quickly as the Germans had done before him, with a different kind of fear nipping at his heels.

 

**0x0x0x0**

Jensen felt like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, but with fewer rats. Well, no rats at all, to be honest, unless you counted the one they’d disturbed when they’d lit a lamp outside the storeroom at the back of the washhouse. Jensen had wandered through every room and corridor inside and outside the Maison des Autres and found not a single nun, nor burly orderly. Every door was unbarred, every lock was sprung, and everywhere Jensen went, he found confused but largely happy folk, most of whom decided to join him exploring the house that had been both home and prison to him for the last four years. By the time he found his way down the stairs to the large common room, virtually the entire population of des Autres was following behind him, chattering to each other and to themselves indiscriminately. At their rear was a blaze of light, where every lamp in the place had been lit in their wake. Many of the residents of des Autres didn’t like the dark, with good reason.

~0~0~

He had just turned eighteen when he’d woken to find that his father had committed him to the care of the Order of L’eclaire Lune, having declared his son both mentally incompetent and depraved. The Abbess had accepted both the Vicomte’s money, and his judgement of his son’s state of mind and morality, telling herself that one had no influence on the other.

So Jean d’Aubusson had found himself confined in a straightjacket, locked inside a dingy room whose padded walls were stained with sadness and anger. Rage was all that Jean had felt, and for a long time, it consumed him. At first he had yelled and sworn and cried for Emile, but as time had passed and the silence and the solitude wore him down, Jean had grown quiet and Jensen had emerged from the wreckage of the past, like a phoenix. When Jean had run away he had adopted a circus name, stolen from a book he’d loved as a child, about a Scandinavian sailor called Jens Jensen. He just liked the ring of it, and now, locked away from the world, this was the name he went back to. From then on he refused to answer to anything but Jensen. Jensen had an inner calm that Jean had only craved for – a calm that came, not from acceptance of his fate, but from an active rejection of his father, and of his family who never defended him or attempted to free him. So it was only natural for this to be the identity he assumed in Les Autres.

Time passed, and the institution’s regime changed, and Jensen’s origins were completely forgotten when the mercenary Abbess who’d pocketed Vicomte d’Aubusson’s money died. With her demise the only person who knew Jensen’s origins was gone. Mother Marie Claire took her place. The quiet and reserved Jensen had gained a position of trust working as secretary for the Sacrist, Sister Vincent, so he was able to discretely ‘lose’ all records pertaining to his arrival, and thus Jean d’Aubusson was finally laid to rest. Only Jensen remained. If Jean’s remaining family missed him, Jensen neither knew nor cared. Not one of them had ever bothered to visit, or even sent him a letter.

His family was here now.

Misha Krushnic - aka the Duke of Clubs, Monsieur Marguerite, the Duchess Victoria, Angelique the Madame, little Papillon the dancer, the General, Figaro the Barber of Seville, the Bishop. These were the people he cared about, his friends, his comrades.

Jensen didn’t think of himself as sane or insane. Not any more. Not since two years ago, when news of the German invasion had reached even the depths of the Asylum, and when he’d persuaded the resident doctor to allow him to leave des Autres to fight for France. The Duke, or rather his sometimes rational alter ego, Misha, had insisted on accompanying him, and it was Misha who had brought him back to the Maison when Jensen had been severely injured. Jensen hadn’t thought about leaving again since the moment he’d been carried (for the second time) inside the crumbling grandeur of the old mansion.  
This was his home; it was where he belonged.

 

~0~0~

Jensen and his motley crew eventually arrived in the main hall, having ascertained that the Maison was definitely deserted apart from the inmates. Jensen was feeling decidedly unsettled by this, only to be further disturbed by discovering a stranger in their midst, standing out like a tree in a desert in his soldier’s uniform. This reminder of the war still raging outside was doubly unsettling. The man was young and very tall, towering over everyone; a skinny, shaggy-haired equivalent of the clock tower looming above all the other buildings in Belleville’s town square. He was taller even than Jensen, who was used to being the one everyone had to look up to.

For some obscure reason, the stranger’s uniform included a skirt.

Jensen, without even realising, drew closer and closer, as if the stranger was a fire on a freezing cold day. So when the stranger turned around, clearly about to leave, Jensen found himself unintentionally blocking the way. Toe to toe, Jensen looked up into a pair of curious, slanted, multi-coloured eyes and lost himself entirely for the second time in his life.

Jensen had a smile on his face as he watched the stranger leave, and didn’t even mind Misha making a quip about him having stars in his eyes.

For the first time in a long time, Jensen wanted to fly.

 

**0x0x0x0**

Belleville was fighting a shockingly hollow feeling, having watched the last patrol of les Allemandes exiting through her gates with an alacrity that had her examining her streets for pursuers. There were none. The irritating buzz of the German armored cars faded away – she much preferred the clop of horses’ hooves – and her streets fell uncomfortably silent. It was a silence that lasted only for a moment, but it was a moment that felt much too long, even to one as ancient as she.

Consequently it made her happy a little while later to spy the young mysterious stranger emerging from the enclosure that surrounded the Asylum’s grounds. She recognized him, in spite of the lack of pigeons, from his shaggy hair and shapely calves. His subsequent erratic behaviour was puzzling. She observed his apparently aimless wandering of her streets with some curiosity, as he entered and exited buildings seemingly at random, until she was distracted from this mystery by the welcome sight and sound of more people tumbling forth from the Asylum. It was comforting to know she was still occupied; it renewed her sense of purpose.

The people scattered across the vacant lots, disappearing into houses only to reemerge newly decked out in the clothing abandoned along with Belleville herself by her more craven former citizens. Colours flashed bright in the rising sunlight as the former inmates shed the dull greys of insanity and donned the silks and satins of normality.

As the sun kissed Belleville’s walls, her mortar expanded in the pleasant warmth that promised a more sultry summer heat as the sun ascended.

Perhaps today would be a good day to die after all.

 

**0x0x0x0**

Jared was distraught. Not only could he not find this blessed blockhouse full of explosives (which he still didn’t know how to defuse when he found it, but that was beside the point), but now he had found he was responsible for an asylum full of people who would be incinerated by his failure… one of whom was the most beautiful specimen of manhood Jared had ever seen outside museums of classical sculpture. Thoughts of the heady sculptural pleasures that might lie underneath Adonis’ less-than-flattering clothing were no help whatsoever, as they served only as a distraction from the task in hand.

Memories of those startlingly green eyes, and those groin-stirringly perfect lips were very diverting. Jared could at least console himself with the thought that when he was blown to smithereens he’d have something more pleasant to on his mind than concrete and wire cutters.

Jared entered yet another empty building without knocking. He’d long since decided his deeply ingrained politeness was just wasting precious time, and besides, there was no one left in Belleville to appreciate it.

At least that was what he’d thought, until he emerged from the last house he’d searched into a street full of perambulating people. Suddenly Belleville was looking like a rustic version of Edinburgh’s Princes Street on a sunny day, only less dreek and with more timber-framing. A finely dressed gentleman with his elegant wife’s gloved hand draped over his right arm strolled by. He gave Jared a jaunty wave with his left hand, and the lady tipped her parasol at him with a smile. Jared nodded in automatic reply before recognition struck. It was the Duke of Clubs. Jared looked more closely at the faces of the other passers by and sure enough, there the General (now attired in appropriately pseudo-military fashion in what looked like the brass helmet of a fire chief), and there, tripping along dressed all in jaunty yellow, was Monsieur Marguerite, looking fresh as the daisy he was named after. Sadly, there was no sign of Adonis.

Jared felt a bead of sweat trickle down his back. The day was going to be a scorcher, and he found himself wishing he could strip off all his gear and his heavy woollen jacket and join the lunatics strolling the streets and forget all about the bloody war.

But of course Jared couldn’t do that, he had a job to do, a town to save.

He grabbed the arm of one of the passing lunatics to whom he hadn’t yet been introduced, and tried asking about the blockhouse again, but the man just stared at Jared as if he was the crazy one.

“Sorry, must rush, must dash - for the sake of my smashing moustache - the Barber awaits!”

Jared had to acknowledge that the man did have a magnificent moustache, one that must require a lot of maintenance, but that didn’t help _him_ one little bit. As he watched the man skip away down the street, twirling said moustache with gay abandon, Jared was no closer to finding the German munitions and preventing the explosion. It was as if Hope was skipping alongs personified by the diminishing figure of Moustache Man, and Jared could only watch as it vanished round a corner with one last flourish of its heel along with the man.

“Merde!” he swore with feeling, too caught up in his thoughts to hear the approaching footsteps behind him. He nearly jumped a mile when a warm hand landed on his shoulder.

 

**0x0x0x0**

The world was full of colour and the morning air already warm when Jensen stepped out of the Asylum gates for the first time in nearly two years. He was the last inmate to leave, not because he was reluctant, but because he’d taken the opportunity to rummage around in the storeroom to find his circus costume. He had no desire to analyse why he hadn’t wanted to leave the Maison des Autres without changing into what was essentially a relic of another life, but once he’d squeezed himself into the now slightly-too-small spangled suit he felt happier, and that was reason enough.

Once in the town proper, Jensen’s first task was to apply the finishing touches to his stage persona. Leaving Misha rummaging through the kitchen cupboards downstairs, Jensen sat down at the dressing table of some unknown wife or mother or daughter. He carefully applied abandoned cosmetics; eye-liner, a touch of rouge, shockingly red lipstick that he then blotted off, leaving his lips looking bee stung and full. Jensen stared at his reflection in the mirror for a long time, his mind still and quiet. It wasn’t his own face he saw, staring back at him, but Jensen hadn’t recognised the person he saw in the mirror for a long time now, makeup or no. Even Emile’s image was not as clear in his head as it had been. Blurred by time, and by other things. Dreadful things.

Jensen blinked once, twice. He wasn’t seeing the mirror at all any more, and his mind was no longer quiet. Instead he was back in that trench at Verdun, waiting for the shelling to stop and the whistle to blow. Misha was by his side, but in those moments before flinging themselves over the top into the flesh shredding hail of machine gun bullets, every man was alone with his private terror.

Now as back then, it was Misha who pulled him out of the muddy shell hole he had ended up in.

Misha burst into the bedroom and draped himself over Jensen’s back, resting his chin on Jensen’s shoulder. Misha’s blue eyes were Jensen’s wake-up call, bringing him back into the present.

“You were brooding again, mon ami. You know that is bad for your soul.”

Jensen had lifted his head and latched onto Misha’s wry gaze, needing the other man to be his anchor to reality. Jensen knew that Misha understood the need for something outside of oneself to cling onto when everything got too much.

And that was why Jensen had nothing but sympathy for the tall British soldier with the strange uniform looking lost when Jensen came across him in the street. Jensen could feel how knotted up and tense Jared’s shoulder muscles were under his casually placed hand. The boy was practically vibrating with nerves.

Jensen couldn’t have that.

They probably only had a day at most, and maybe only a few hours of freedom before the world inevitably came crashing back down onto their little town, as it always did, and took the sunshine away, and Jensen couldn’t bear to think that anyone should waste even a moment of that precious time. He decided then and there to make it his mission to ensure that Jared relaxed and found some pleasure, just as all Jensen’s friends were doing.

 

**0x0x0x0**

“You swear very prettily in French for a British soldier,” a deep voice said, sounding both amused and curious. Jared spun round, his heart jumping in his chest. It was Pygmalion’s statue, the crazy Adonis, who now looked even more beautiful, lit by sunlight and newly dressed in… what on earth was that? Jared blinked in disbelief as he absorbed the sight before him.

Adonis was dressed in a form fitting, single piece white suit embroidered with sequins that shot off tiny sparkles of light in all directions as his chest rose and fell with the rhythm of each breath. His eyes were outlined with black, making them appear even larger, and Jared could have sworn the green of Adonis’ irises was flecked with gold dust. The living statue looked as though he’d just stepped out of a fairy tale circus into real life.

“I’m Jensen,” Adonis was saying, holding out his hand. For an absurd moment, good manners took over and Jared thrust out his own hand to shake Adonis’ – no – _Jensen_ ’s offered hand.

“Private Jared Padalecki. Pleased to meet you.”

“You speak very good French, Private Jared Padalecki” Jensen observed. Jared blushed.

“I speak German too,” he said, then babbled on a little in case Jensen thought he was boasting, “It’s nothing special, just one of the consequences of having parents who were in the diplomatic services…”

He trailed off into sadness at the memory of his strict, long-deceased father and his recently-deceased mother. Jensen was looking at him with sympathy, as if he could read Jared’s mind, and Jared realised with a fresh jolt of embarrassment that they were still holding hands. This absurdly beautiful man was addling Jared’s brain. It was as if, here in Belleville, madness was contagious.

A small crowd was gathering around them, murmuring excitedly about the King returning. It was that same nonsense that had scared off the Germans in the asylum and made Jared wish he’d been a little more careful with his choice of an alias.

Jared’s shoulders slumped. He had totally failed to find this blessed bunker, or deduce what the cryptic statement about the knight meant. He was starting to wonder if the late Monsieur Bresson had been drunk, or maybe the wireless operator had totally misheard the spy’s message, because it just seemed a meaningless phrase pulled at random from one of Jared’s Grandmother’s games of ad-libs. He looked at the cheerful faces of the escaped asylum inmates and realised he could at least do one useful deed. He could rescue these innocent souls from the certain destruction of their town, since it seemed he had failed so miserably at preventing it.

If it meant playing to present company’s shared delusion then so be it. Jared wasn’t very good at staying down in the dumps anyway, having far too optimistic a nature for his own good. He brightened at the thought of taking positive action and straightened his spine. He would do his best to assume a regal aspect, though he feared he just looked ridiculous.

“My dear citizens!” Jared said, then repeated it louder to make himself heard over the general hubbub. “Citizens of Belleville! I, the King of Hearts…”

He didn’t have an opportunity to say any more, even though he’d had half a bonnie speech ready in his head, because his citizens had, it seems, been waiting for the moment he’d announce himself to erupt into a celebration. One of the men had procured a horse from somewhere, and there was much cheering and shouting while many hands helped Jared onto its unsaddled broad back. Fortunately the horse was a sturdy animal, it must have had some carthorse blood, Jared thought. It was not only broad backed but tall enough for Jared’s long legs not to brush the ground as it ambled off.

Jared’s initial perturbation faded as the joyous crowd flowed around him in a river of colour and happiness. Jensen jogged alongside, resting one warm hand on Jared’s knee, and after a few minutes, Jared couldn’t help relaxing into the moment, laughter bubbling up inside him. Someone started singing ‘Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag’ or at least a French version of it, and after a bar or two, everyone joined in, Jared singing the English words as he didn’t know this French version. He steered the parade down the narrow streets towards the shelled out gap where the medieval gate had been, and was bellowing out the lyrics so loudly he missed the moment when his entourage began to peel away. One by one they drifted off, like dandelion seeds caught in a breeze.

By the time they passed through the gap in the town walls, only Jensen remained at Jared’s side. The sound of the big guns became clear in the distance, an assault on the mind as much as on the ear. Jared’s singing faltered then stopped all together as he realised the comforting weight of Jensen’s hand had disappeared from his leg, and he and the white horse were moving forward alone.

He twisted around and there was Jensen, a lone figure stopped a mere twenty steps outside of Belleville’s gate. It was twenty steps none of the other folk had been able to take. The white of his costume appeared grey in the dust-laden daylight; the sequins’ sparkle tarnished and dull. Jared could see that Jensen’s face had acquired a pallor that reminded him of the corpses that littered the trenches after a foray. Behind Jensen, the other inmates lined the high walls or stood within the shadow of the broken archway of the gate as if the wooden doors that had protected the town from invaders for centuries were still in place and were closed.

Then even the horse came to a halt, head hanging down as if Jared was now a weight too heavy to bear. Jared slid off the horse’s back, and the white gelding immediately trotted happily back into the town, with a swish of its tail, as if it too had never wanted to leave.

“But. But if you stay here, you will all die,” Jared said, despairingly. Jensen didn’t move, forcing Jared to close the gap between them, each footstep feeling heavy as lead. Jensen gave Jared a look that was both sorrowful and pleading as he gestured towards the never-ceasing sounds of the bombardment.

“There is nothing but sound and fury out there, Jared. That world is full of anger and wicked people. We’d rather stay here.”

Jared looked out over the devastated remains of once fertile farmland towards the pall of smoke that hung heavy on the horizon in every direction. He thought about Jeff, drowning in a mud-filled shell hole in the pouring rain, cold and alone. He thought about his mother’s terrible, all-consuming grief for her eldest son and how it had destroyed her; about his commanding officer who didn’t even know that Jared wasn’t his brother; about his lovely pigeons and how their lives had been put on the line for a cause their tiny brains could never understand. He thought about all his friends and comrades whose lives had also been sacrificed as if they were worth even less than a common bird. At least killing a carrier pigeon merited a fine; a simple soldier was just cannon fodder.

Jared looked over his shoulder, tried to imagine going back to his trench, leaving these crazy people to die here, clinging onto their silly fantasies. They were dooming themselves by staying, but it was their own choice, wasn’t it? Why should Jared care? He half turned, trying to convince himself he should return to his regiment, but something was tugging at him like one of his pigeons being called home, pulling him inexorably back towards the little French town.

Whether it was a sense of honour, or not wanting to leave a task unfinished, or simply fatalism that said that it was a route to certain death whichever option he chose, Jared didn’t know.  But whatever it was, it made him turn his back on the outside world and take another step towards Jensen.

 

**0x0x0x0**

Jensen didn’t even realise how badly he had wanted Jared to stay until the tall British soldier turned around and moved towards him.

It made no sense at all, and yet all the sense in the world for Jensen to stretch up onto his toes to bridge that last tiny gap between them, and kiss any negative words away from Jared’s parted lips.

When Jensen pulled away, a round of applause rang out around them.

“Bravo, bravo! Encore!”

To Jensen’s satisfaction, Jared was looking adorably flushed and infinitely distracted. It would take a stronger man than Jensen to resist that look, so Jensen didn’t even try. He stepped back in close, grabbed Jared’s head and kissed him again to a chorus of encouragement from the residents of des Autres.

“A wedding! A royal wedding!”

Jensen wasn’t sure who started the cry, but the idea was greeted with enthusiasm by the growing crowd. Someone grasped one of his hands, then he and Jared were being pulled reluctantly apart. Everyone was running down the narrow streets towards the town square, and it seemed that before Jensen could blink the Gothic arches of St Finbar’s nave were soaring up above their heads like the ribs of Jonah’s whale.

 

**0x0x0x0**

At the first soft touch of Jensen’s lips all Jared’s anxiety stilled, as if he was inhaling nitrous oxide gas instead of air. He could feel the shape of Jensen’s smile against his lips, warm and full of promise. All his muscles turned to toffee as every scrap of tension, uncertainty and resistance fled, chased away by Jensen’s tongue as he pushed Jared’s lips open and tentatively explored his mouth.

He was vaguely aware of being surrounded by cheering people, then he was being half-dragged, half-shoved along the street. Their jubilation was so infectious, his only concern was that he’d been separated from the first, best, only kiss of his nearly nineteen years.

Sadly, once inside the dimly lit, cool interior of the church, Jared’s senses (or his sensibility) began to seep back into his bones with a pervasive and depressing dampness.

The Duchess and Monsieur Marguerite had raided the florist’s; there was a rainbow of petals scattered on the worn stone flags of the floor, more fluttered in the air like tropical butterflies, thrown by the impromptu congregation. The Bishop was resplendent in gold and purple, looking every inch the part since his raid on the Vestry.

“The bells!” The Bishop cried, waving his arms wildly. “We must have bells for a wedding!’

“The bells have gone,” Jensen said sorrowfully from beside Jared. “We shall have to do without. The only bell left in town won’t sound until the Knight strikes it a midnight.”

Jared started. “What? What did you say?” He spun around and grabbed Jensen by both arms.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know the English,” Jensen began, but Jared interrupted, too impatient to be polite any more.

“Just repeat what you said about the bells, quick!”

“I said there are no bells, the soldiers stole them three years ago for the war effort…”

“No, no, no, about the Knight striking at midnight, you said he struck at midnight, what is that? What does it mean?”

Jensen was staring at Jared as if he was mad, and Jared was too caught up in the excitement to find that ironic.

“It’s just the Town Hall clock, Jared. There is a mechanical knight who comes out once a day at midnight to strike the bell in the clock tower…wait! Where are you going?”

“To defuse the bomb!” Jared yelled over his shoulder as he ran out of the church as fast as he could.

“What bomb?” Jensen asked nobody in particular, and was met with a chorus of Gallic shrugs.

Jensen looked around, momentarily at a loss, then turned and ran after Jared. If there really was a bomb, perhaps Jared would need some help.

 

**0x0x0x0**

Very early in this war one invader or the other, Belleville neither knew nor cared, had stolen her cathedral’s ancient brass bells. Metal was precious, but Belleville wasn’t interested in these men’s shortage of ore, or their petty conflict, she just missed the sound of her bells ringing. So she watched with concern as well as interest when the kilted stranger started climbing La Mairie’s clock tower towards the last remaining bell in town. A minute or so after the kilted one began his ascent she saw one of her own children stepping out from a high window in Madame Bovary’s elegant town house across the square onto one of the new-fangled telegraph wires.  If she’d had eyebrows, she’d have raised them.

Belleville was made of brick and cobbles and limestone, but even she could suffer hurt, and she was all too aware of the fragility of the humans who she sheltered. It was hard to watch as one of them deliberately put his already short life at risk. It was reckless, feckless and incomprehensible. Her attention was divided between wondering what the kilted one was doing and worrying that the pretty sparkly boy (Jensen, she recalled, his name was Jensen) would plunge to his death at any moment as he inched along the high wire. She noted with bemusement the huge smile on Jensen’s face, which was, to be frank, inexplicable. But then all her centuries of existence hadn’t really helped her understand half the human behaviour she witnessed within her walls, so there was nothing new there.

The two men reached the belfry at almost the same time via their different routes. A few moments of conversation was followed by the pair wielding a pair of wire cutters and for some reason, wresting the mace out of the mechanical knight’s hand. It appeared that their mysterious business was concluded because they sealed the activity with a couple of rounds of passionate kisses that Belleville highly approved of. Both men gave the impression that they were highly satisfied with both the kissing and the success of their mission, as there was some joyful whooping and more embracing, all of which looked highly precarious in that elevated position.

Belleville was briefly puzzled over a moment of stillness between the two men, but she was distracted by some new activity in the square below. The small crowd of spectators was parting to allow the passage of six men holding a large tarpaulin. After some more shouting and much gesticulation, Jensen and the Kilted man held hands and leaped off the Clock Tower, landing with a bounce on the stretched tarpaulin. Belleville had never seen such a thing in all her long life, and was very impressed. The ladies in the crowd seemed equally impressed, though their interest was more engaged by the view when the wide kilt flared like a silk parachute on the way down, providing everyone below with quite a spectacle.

 

**0x0x0x0**

One moment Jared was kissing like he would never have enough of it, which was certainly true for Jensen, but the next moment Jared was pulling away, albeit with a show of great reluctance.

“I have to get a message to my unit,” Jared explained. Jensen nodded his understanding, though he really didn’t want to think about what lay beyond the confines of Belleville’s walls. He’d been out there one time too many and had come back broken, with the lingering smell of Death in his nostrils. Now there was no kissing to distract him, and from their vantage point at the top of the clock tower, Jensen could already see and hear too much. From up there, Jensen could see how smoke lay leaden over the land, obscuring the deep scarring of the trenches but concealing nothing of the devastation the war was causing. The heat of the summer sun had parched the bare earth where there should be fertile fields. The sunlight was highlighting the  deep fissures and casting the cratered shell holes into darkest shadow. In the killing fields there was no colour but drab, a monotony broken only by the occasional glint of steel and rust like dried blood.

Imperceptibly, Jensen’s body began to shake. He gripped onto the stone tracery as the trembling spread as insidiously as the memories that were flashing into his head. He was running, terror ahead and behind him, then he was flying through the air, deafened and blind, pitched headlong into darkness and black cloying mud.  He was waking soaked through and frozen with the taste of blood and soil and excrement in his mouth, unable to move anything but his eyes, the mud sucking at his limbs, swallowing him whole…

“Jensen! Jen, please,” a voice was calling his name… not Misha, not one of his regiment…no. Warm hands were wrapped around his biceps, warm breath touched his cheek, alongside the comforting brush of sunlight. Gradually Jensen began see summer instead of gore in the veil of red covering his eyes. Slowly he allowed them to open.

Down below he could hear the sound of cheering. It was almost loud enough to drown out the distant booming of the big mortars, and in front of him was Jared’s concerned face, thrust so close that their noses were almost touching. Jensen’s trembling finally started to subside. Jared was large enough to blot out the rest of the world. When Jared kissed him this time, Jensen kept his eyes wide open, fixed on the clean, pure blue of the sky.

Flinging themselves off the tower into a tarpaulin that looked the size of a handkerchief from that height was madness and exhilarating and the perfect way to wipe out the memory of his fear. He landed breathless from laughing at Jared who had screamed like a little girl all the way down.

Jensen followed Jared at a run back to La Maison to retrieve the birds, then followed him again, back to the town square. He found Jared a pencil and paper to scribble two duplicated messages, one for Ruby to carry and one for Meg, while watching every expression that chased across Jared’s face, memorising every nuance. He watched the affectionate way Jared tended his birds, cupping each one gently in those big hands, before flinging them into the air to soar high above the grey slate rooftops. He catalogued the way Jared’s eyes changed from blue to grey to green to tawny gold, the colour depending how the light hit them; he memorised the sweep of that upturned nose, the angle of those high cheekbones, the chestnut glints in his hair, the placement of every mole. He stored every image, their colours bright and fresh as a new oil painting.

Jensen absorbed it all in silence and his heart never stopped singing, even though he knew every flap of those departing wings brought his time with Jared closer to an end.

He’d give into the sadness when Jared was gone, but for now, he’d enjoy every moment they had left.

 

**0x0x0x0**

Belleville wouldn’t normally have taken note of the flight of a bird over her walls, but she couldn’t help but notice when a gunshot shattered the stone head of the statue of the Virgin Mary that had watched over the north road into the town since 1645. The bullet had committed this act of sacrilege against both Virgin and town after it passed through the now sadly deceased-pigeon. Belleville watched as the bird plummeted to the ground in a bloody mess of feathers near the feet of the German sniper that had fired the shot. The sniper bent down and unravelled a thin strip of paper that had been tied to the pigeon’s leg. He stood for a moment silently reading, before turning to run back towards the German lines.

Belleville thought this probably didn’t bode well.

She was right.

 

**0x0x0x0**

“Come with me,” Jensen said, taking hold of Jared’s hand in a way that was at once shocking and yet utterly familiar. Jared didn’t think to question, he just went. His girls were gone and soon enough his unit would be marching through Belleville’s southern gates to reclaim him along with the town . Until then, Jared didn’t want to think about being Private Padalecki. He’d done his duty; the town was safe for now, or as safe as it could be in the midst of the war to end all wars.

Now, Jared had the attention of the most beautiful man in the world, and no intention of wasting a single moment. He was so focused on Jensen that he barely registered his surroundings as Jensen led him through a doorway and began ascending a dark wooden staircase. In the room below, someone had uncovered a piano and the strains of Schubert’s Piano Sonata in E Major accompanied them up the stairs. It added to Jared’s feeling of having stepped into another world where dreams could come true, and the light urgency of the tripping notes wove their way through Jared’s fingers as he fumbled with the fastenings on Jensen’s circus costume. The touch of Jensen’s fingers was burning Jared’s skin wherever it landed, and he was breathing as heavily as if he’d just run the gauntlet of machine gun fire across No Man’s Land.

“I’ve never…” he said, but was silenced by the gentle press of Jensen’s lips warm against his own. With nothing to distract him now, Jared gave himself up to the wonderful sensation, willingly opening his mouth to Jensen’s probing tongue. His legs turned to water and he mindlessly allowed Jensen to steer him backwards through another doorway until the backs of his knees hit something yielding. Without ever breaking their kiss, Jensen pressed Jared down into an enveloping softness of lace and duck-down. Somehow, Jensen had found them a bed, and Jared was already half-naked, his thick khaki jacket and white uniform shirt gone, boots kicked off. He was on his back, sinking into the mattress with only his rucked up kilt and long woollen socks left on, neither of which concealed anything of note. He had a brief moment of embarrassment as his penis gaily saluted the world, then Jensen was lowering himself down on top of Jared. The touch of the bare skin of Jensen’s chest on his own electrified him, and Jared was lost.

Afterwards, Jared lay with his head cushioned on Jensen’s broad chest, while Jensen’s long skilful fingers stroked his hair. He didn’t care that their skin was stuck together with sweat and other bodily fluids. He didn’t care that when he’d finally regained enough of his senses to look around he saw that the room Jensen  had chosen had half of its outer wall missing, leaving them exposed in more way than one. Evidently this house had been blown away by artillery some time ago, as the bed they lay on smelt damp and musty as a result of being exposed to the elements for so long. Still, none of that mattered as Jared fell asleep to the even rhythm of Jensen’s heartbeat, accompanied by the soothing melodies from the piano still being played in the room below. He’d never felt so cherished.

Of course, such contentment couldn’t last.

Jared was startled into wakefulness some unknown amount of time later by the unwelcome sound of marching feet, hobnails loud on the street outside. He sat up hurriedly, scrabbling around for his discarded clothing. Jensen was sitting in a rain-stained armchair, already wearing his circus costume and an air of feigned detachment.

“Oh bollocks!” Jared said, then apologised as if his grandmother was listening “’Scuse my French.” Which elicited a reluctant sounding, wry chuckle from Jensen.

Jared hopped about on one leg then the other while he forced his feet into half-unlaced boots, hoping that the missing wall wasn’t exposing his efforts (and more) to the troop below. By the time Jensen took pity on him and had helped him find his undershirt, uniform shirt and top it all off with his jacket, the last row of British soldiers was disappearing around the corner of the street, on their way into the town square.

Jared clattered down the stairs and out into the street, with Jensen close behind him. As his boots hit the cobbles he stopped dead, so suddenly that Jensen bumped into him. Jared spun around and grabbed Jensen, holding onto the other man’s arms with a death-like grip. Jensen never even winced, though Jared knew he was probably leaving bruises.

“I don’t want to go.” Jared said, trying not to sound like a four-year-old child being sent to school for the first time.

Jensen looked up at Jared, eyes wide with sympathy.

“I know.”

Jared sighed and leant his head down until his forehead rested on Jensen’s. Jensen’s arms wound round Jared, pulling him in close.

“But you have to go back, and so do we. The townsfolk will return to their houses as soon as your regiment gives the all clear, and my family is going back home to La Maison as we speak. I will join them when you and I are done saying goodbye, and then everything will be back to normal.”

Jared gave a bitter little laugh and held Jensen tighter, his words muffled by Jensen’s shoulder and full of unshed tears.

“Normal? Killing and dying in a muddy field full of wire and shell holes?”

“Oh Jay, that isn’t an everyday thing, you know that. One day the war will be over, but when it is, I’ll still be _other_ , just a crazy person shut away here in La Maison des Autres. You will go home to Scotland, to be with your family, to live a happy life.”

There was so much wrong with that statement: Jared didn’t know where to start. It was only the memory of his brother that gave him the strength to step out of the safety of Jensen’s embrace, ready to do the right thing and re-join his regiment.

He walked slowly towards the square, only to realise as he reached the corner that Jensen wasn’t by his side. When he turned around and looked back, the street was empty.

 

**0x0x0x0**

The citizens of Belleville had begun gathering at her edges, clutching their belongings, eager to see their homes again. The others, the faithful ones who had stayed with the town when the rest had deserted her, were shedding their borrowed robes like moulting tropical birds, leaving sad splashes of colour as they wended their way through Belleville’s streets back towards the asylum. In the town square, a small troop of kilted soldiers was marching down one side of the bunkhouse, blissfully unaware that at that very moment, a similar-sized troop of grey-clad German soldiers marched in the opposite direction on the other side of the concrete structure. The noise of their own metal-studded boots drowned out the sounds of the enemy, while the bulk of the bunker shielded them from each other.

The air in Belleville’s streets stilled as if she was holding her breath, as it seemed for a moment that the two armies would pass from her square without ever realising their proximity. But at the last second, one man looked around and caught sight of the enemy soldiers. The commanders on both sides started yelling. The troops formed up into orderly lines, facing each other across the empty space. Belleville had seen humans do many strange and unaccountable things over her long life, but even she could not believe that these men were going to do battle with each other in so exposed a position.

Yet that was exactly what happened. The commands were given, both sides opened fire and all Belleville could smell was cordite and blood, the gunshots echoing obscenely loud as the sound bounced around the enclosed space. It wasn’t long before silence fell and the smoke from the rifles began to dissipate. Not one man was left standing. Not one man was left alive.

Belleville didn’t know these individuals, and wouldn’t have been able to bring herself to mourn stupidity so monumental, even if they had been her own people and she’d had a heart.

 

**0x0x0x0**

The stench of death was everywhere. It hung in the air long after the rifle smoke cleared to reveal the bodies scattered like so many abandoned Guy Fawkes effigies. Bonfire night was over and everyone gone home without even bothering to burn them. Blood was dark and shining where it gathered in pools around each smooth rounded cobblestone, catching the light of the lowering sun.

Jared pulled off his black Glangarry hat, twisting the rough felt in both hands, his breathing heavy with the beginnings of panic. How could this have happened?

He started when someone moaned, dropping his hat onto the soiled and pitiful ground. The low murmur of pain was followed by a sigh, and that awful rattle deep in the throat that was instantly recognisable as the sound of another death. There were no other noises, no movement. Nothing human.

Jared stepped over an outstretched leg, then an out-flung arm. The bodies were so heaped and tangled, it was hard to make out individual forms, but after a while Jared’s eyes adjusted to the chaos. There he recognised Captain Hamilton, and here was Digger, and Wee Willie Whitie, and Macca Mc Gregor, and over there was that Irish chap who’s name Jared couldn’t recall – and that suddenly seemed to be the worst thing about it – that he’d forgotten a comrade’s name and now the man was dead and Jared wasn’t.

Jared wasn’t dead.

Then he saw it; on its side, the ring at the top still loosely gripped in a hand stained red. It was a bird cage. Heart beating too loud in his ears, he freed the cage from the death grip, too nervous about what he would find to think about how macabre it was. He peered anxiously inside. One bird, feathers matted and sticking out every which way, but he could see her rapid breaths and recognised her markings instantly. It was Meg, and she was alive, and Jared shouldn’t feel so happy about that one tiny little life but he couldn’t help it.

He stood up slowly and started walking. Past the pale shattered faces and red splattered uniforms of the German troop, past the shocked and silent returning citizens of Belleville. His bloody boots came off first: he’d never got round to tying the laces properly so they came off easy. His jacket followed, buttons flying as his numb fingers failed at the simple task of unfastening one handed. He wasn’t going to loosen his grip on Meg’s cage for anything. He ripped off his shirt before the jacket had touched the ground behind him. The kilt unfastened and unravelled gracefully and all that remained of his uniform were his socks. He was leaving a trail of clothing like autumn leaves, like a snake shedding its skin: Jared was making himself into something shiny and new.

The ornate cast-iron asylum gates were closed and locked. The nuns of L’eclair Lune had repossessed La Maison des Autres, restored its defences so its inhabitants were once more safe from the outside world.

Naked as a newborn, Jared rang the bell.

 

**Epilogue**

When the lunatic asylum of La Maison Des Autres closed in 1963, all its records were transferred to Les Cinglés’s regional archive. Amongst the paperwork was a list of ailments for admissions to the hospital from 1889 to 1918.

That list included some afflictions of the mind that one might have expected, along with some that today seem bizarre:  
Brain Fever; Feebleness of Intellect; Overtaxing Mental Powers; business nerves; Novel Reading; Seduction and Disappointment; Snuff Eating for over 2 Years, and Over-study of Religion being but a few examples.

Against the name of Jensen Ackles, admitted to the asylum for a second time in 1916 aged 20, was recorded the following: Gunshot wound, The War, and Periodic Fits.

Against the name of Jay Paon, admitted to the asylum in 1918, age unknown, was recorded the following: Sexual Derangement, Excessive Nudity and Mental Excitement.

Both men were discharged into society in 1921. There is no record of what became of them.

 

**0x0x0x0  
FIN**

**Author’s note** :  
The mental illnesses described are taken from a list of admissions from Trans-Alleheny Lunatic Asylum 1864 to 1889.

Les Cinglés roughly translates as crackpots.  
Maison des Autres roughly translates as the House of the Others.  
Paon means rooster (also peacock) in French.  
A sgian dubh a knife commonly worn down the sock of a Scotsman.  
For the non Brits – Guy Fawkes is the chap who plotted to blow up the Houses of Parliament back in the 17th century. He failed, and since then we have a night of fireworks on 5th November every year during which effigies of Guy Fawkes are burnt. Which, when you write it down, is kind of a weird thing to do.

Pigeons were used extensively during the First World War. Though the armies did have radio communication, it wasn’t reliable, so pigeons and dogs were used to send messages, even while offensives were in full force. You can read more [here](http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/pigeons_and_world_war_one.htm).

A lot more happens in the film King of Hearts (Roi de Coeur) than I’ve described here, and it is a truly charming film, cleverly done so it is moving, funny and sweet in equal parts. I saw it once when I was still at school and it made a big impression on me – I spent many years hoping they would show it on TV again, but eventually managed to track down a Korean import DVD. I’d recommend watching if you can get hold of it!

 

 

 

 


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